Drusus

The reason was a double loading. That means you load the mortar when there is already one grenade in the tube. This can happen suprisingly easily when there are 3 mortars firing the simultaneous first shot of a fire mission. You think that the mortar fired but actually only the two others did. It doesn't help that when you are in Rovajärvi, you usually can sleep only 1-3 hours per night. I have been able to sleep 10m from a firing mortar for a fire mission of 8 grenades and not wake up. But I was ammusmies 2. Direct translation is ammoman 2, indirect translation is that he is the guy who doesn't need brains, and in the army you don't use your brains simply because you have them, only if you are ordered to...

I have posted this information before, but the finnish system is to have marching order of 1st platoon, mortar platoon, 2nd platoon and then 3rd platoon. When the first platoon makes contact with the enemy, the mortar platoon begins firing with the ammo they carry. This is about 20 grenades per mortar. Then the 2nd and 3rd platoons deploy through the mortar platoons positions and drop (not literally) their ammo at the mortar platoons positions. If the mortar platoon is separated from the main body, then you want to have a road or fire just one fire mission which is pretty much useless. Carrying the rounds with only the men from mortar teams is going to be pretty much useless. BTW here is a nice picture about firing a 120mm mortar: 120mm mortar firing at Rovajärvi (irc-galleria) Just for information there was yesterday an accident at Rovajärvi, one dead and 6 injured. It seems like a mortar round exploded at the firing positions of 120mm mortars. Propable reason is double loading. End result is the extremely fast burning of the grenades in tube (not explosion but a deflakration, it is possible that that word means nothing in english). This will cause breaking down of the tube and as you can see it is no wonder somebody might get injured as the men are all near the mortar.

To fire for one minute continuosly, you need 20 grenades which means 100 kg. This is the reason that at least in Finnish doctirine mortars should be used only in places where there is road to the firing positions. I think 200m from road is maximum for optimal firing positions in the manuals. It is suprising how much work there is to prepare & carry the ammunition even if you fire small amounts of grenades.

Peter, I said that I have nothing more to add, but I just have to add this (forgive me, I am a bit drunken). You say that we have 1) LAWs 2) Thermally guided 120mm rounds (10kg) 3) Light mortars (60mm mortar is 20kg) 4) We have a smart ATGM that only weighs about 20kg. Based on this you say that we should be able to build a weapon that can do all this and its weight is no more than 10 kg. I think that this logic is wrong. You asked in an earlier post that how do I suppose new weapon systems are made. I think that first you have to imagine something. THEN you have to try to show that it is possible to build it in theory. And then you have to develope the weapon and test that it can do what you imagined. I would like to see the second step.

Please, tell me these things. 1) What material will the tube be made of. 2) Do you have something to prove that the material can withstand a 5kg grenade to be launched to 3000m. 3) How much will the tube weight? 4) Are you sure base plate is not needed? If it is needed, how much will it weight? 5) Can you point out some project that has been able to build a 5kg grenade that is both smart (I mean able to find and fly to its target without the help of laser or anything like that in a large area) and able to knock out MBT? 6) Are you sure that a dedicated mortar wouldn't be better? If you are not able to answer these questions, then I have nothing more to add.

Mortars aren't propably going away, but they may not look much like regular mortars. Here is my favourite future mortar system, might have something to do with me being Finnish...: AMOS (defense-update.com) If you combine AMOS (or some other advanced mortar system...) with these munitions you have a real killer: Advanced Mortar Munitions (defense-update.com)

Ok, lets go through this. A disposable mortar which you can issue to every squad member. How much that could weigh. 10kg is propably maximum. Now, lets inspect the availabe weapons systems today. Light mortar. 60mm mortars weigh 20 kg and I think making a 60 mm smart round capable of knocking out tanks could be hard. 81mm mortars are about 50 kg. Guided mortar rounds. I don't know of any guided rounds for 81mm mortar, they are all for 120mm mortar and the round weighs about 10 kg itself. There might be smart rounds for 81mm mortar that I don't know of, but if there are any they are propably about 5 kg. Light disposable anti tank weapons. The AT4 weighs about 7kg. And it 1) does not fire at angles more than 45. 2) does not have a range of 3000 meters and 3) is not "smart" in any way. Javelin. Well, it is not sigle use only and: Weight: 28 kg Length: 1.76 meters Range: 2000 m (max) 75 m (min) Warhead Type: Heat Warhead Weight: 8.4 kg Armor Penetration: 600+ mm Launching Platforms: man portable crew of 2 This information is from globalsecurity.org and it is propably a bit off. But still it is safe to say that this weapon doesn't fire at high angles. It doesn't have a firing range of 3000m. As far as I know it isn't so smart that you can just fire to the general direction of unseen enemy. So, where are the components for 10kg fire and forget disposable mortar with a firing range of 3000m and that it is smart enough so that you can just fire to the general direction? As said before the consept is ofcourse neat. But if you can't give me something concrete to show that this is actually possible to do in the foreseeable future then I have to say that this thing is just imagination. It is well possible that this kind of a weapon is going to be real in 50 years. Or that wars are fought entirely by robots. For now it is easier to give laser pointers to the soldiers and use that 120mm mortar with smart rounds. Or just call in a strike with special ammunition over enemy vehicles and thats it.

Well, as said before a system that you can just fire to the direction of the enemy and then the enemy dies without you ever seeing the enemy would be nice. But, please, I think at this point you should point to some projects or some research so that the concept is based on something else than your imagination. I really want a rifle that you can just point to the dircetion of enemy and press trigger and you have a dead enemy. Actually I think we have that already... I should say point to the general direction.

Well, I must say that at the moment I think that withdrawing from Iraq is a bad thing. It would be bad for Iraqi people, it would be bad for Middle East and it would be bad for the rest of the world. If the country is left now I think there would be a civil war breaking out. There are more good reasons not to leave the country: Iraq Strategy (whitehouse.gov). BTW I think this quote tells that the U.S. are going to leave bases there: "While our military presence may become less visible, it will remain lethal and decisive, able to confront the enemy wherever it may organize." While it may be true that you are trying to build a free country and help people, the thing that matters is that atleast at the moment Sunnis aren't so sure that they are going to end up in a free society and in a better country for them. Why don't they believe in that the things you are doing are for their good? Well, lying about the reasons to go to war (at least from their point of view) doesn't help. Being careful not to mention oil as the reason for anything doesn't help. The thing that U.S. funded security contractors have been reported to shoot people randomly doesn't help. The thing that the Iraq security forces have been reported to use torture doesn't help. Paying papers to include news written by U.S. Army might lead somebody to think that there is a possibility that the society isn't going to be so free after all. The insurgents aren't fighting for destruction but they are fighting for their rights, their future. If you want to see their point of view just check out the pictures of this alJazeera article. Tells everything with two pictures, no need to read the article... aljazeera.com. I don't know what the situation in Iraq is, but the important point is that as long as the Sunnis are thinking that what you do is not good for them, they are going to fight. And in solving that situation it doesn't help either that you are picturing them as just trying to destroy things. This is not the goal of the Sunni insurgents. What I am afraid is that the pressure to leave Iraq is going to make the Bush administration to take the easy way, that is building up a Shiite based force and then leave the country in their control. This would lead in possibly worse atrocities than what Saddam did. At the moment there isn't really good choices for the U.S. administration. But the Bush government has nobody to blame but themselves.

I think I forgot to ask the really important ones... What will the system specs be? Is windows, linux and mac versions going to be on the same disc so that I can buy only one copy and play on all platforms? If not, are they all released at the same time?

I have some questions about the game. I hope these haven't been asked already... When will this game be ready? When can I preorder? Is there going to be a playable demo? Can I be a beta tester? Can I have a Pony? Better to have them all in one post...

I think the consept of man-portable (maybe not one-man-portable...) fire-and-forget indirect fire system is going to happen. But I don't think it is going to be a one-shot-only mortar. If you want to have a system of this kind you want to get more than one shot out per platoon / squad. It just makes more sense to have a launcher and five grenades than five combined launcer/grenades. No matter how light the kevlar tube (if it is possible) plus some kind of base plate (I really think you need at least some kind of a plate), it is going to be quite heavy anyways. If I have understood correctly all the modern ATGMs have separated launchers and missiles. I think that if you are going to have a mortar capable of firing five grenades to 3000m then it makes sense to have a real mortar with a range of 6000+ meters and ability to fire a couple hundred rounds per day. And yes, the concept of disposable one shot mortar is neat. But I think it is impossible to make it light enough to be more effective than something like regular mortar. If you are going to have five 20kg one-shot-mortars, then it is easier to have one mortar of 60kg and 8 grenades of 5kg each. Ofcourse I don't really know what modern technology can do. If you could make that disposable mortar only 10kg, then it might be worth it. But I think you can't. This is just my opinion. If the disposable mortar is going to work in a way you fire it just to the direction of the enemy, then it is going to be really, really complicated system. If it only uses some sort of heat / magnet seeking to find a target in, say 100mx100m area, then it is only going to be complicated. Making it more complicated makes it more expensive and heavier. I think there is no 81mm smart AT rounds developed jet. And a smart AT round is a lot less complicated than the "to the direction" system.

In ideal world mortar teams never come under fire. In the real world things are different. If you are firing a mortar effectively you need at least 3 men. If you want to fire for a longer time you need a fourth men to prepare grenades for firing & carry them to the mortar. And then you need to get the ammo from the supply chain to the team. If you are firing a lot, then fetching ammo from the supply depot to the team is a full time job for one man. Now it would be really nice to have your team guarded from all dangers, but you have only so many men in your team. Another problem is that you can't be constantly moving aroung. Setting up good firing positions takes time. Whole another thing is that at least in the Finnish system of defence the mortar platoon is one part of the companys defence. That means if the rifle platoons can't do their job then there is still the HQ platoon and mortar platoon fighting. This means that the mortar platoon might end up under fire. Now ofcourse one tries to fight so that the enemy can't see the mortars. Then mortars are sometimes used in direct fire role. If you are attacking then the risk of getting in a situation where you are fired upon is even bigger. The U.S. side can propably protect mortar teams better than the Syrian side. But no matter what, if things start going wrong a lone mortar team can't always guard itself from all angles. And when things start going wrong the mortar teams fire is needed more than ever. So you can't switch your firing position at will. Which in itself is dangerous*. And many times, and this is even more true for the Syrian player, you don't know what is happening around you. Getting a fire order in rear of you might be the first thing that tells you things are terribly wrong... I must say that my feeling when in the army was that you are terribly alone in the battlefield and you don't know anything whats happening around you. This is something that CMSF will not be able to simulate accurately. The mortar team might not know there is a enemy 200m away but the player will know this. I mean the information from the rifle platoons gets to the player and thus to the decision making of the mortar team instantly and accurately. In reality the information comes late and is propably inaccurate at best and plain wrong at worst. * During one drill our platoon was destroyed by an enemy AA tank. Firing range was about 100 meters, we were in trucks and they fired with 4x23mm AA gun. Would have been a little messy. Why did this happen? Well, we got an order to switch firing positions. The route was well known to us and we had practiced this. First we were in our forward firing positions. Then the enemy started to attack from the forward and we got an order to go to our other firing position. We were supposed to protect our companys flank. Too bad that the enemy had already flanked us and we were never told about this. That drill was really boring (but I think I learned an important lesson about modern fighting) for us. First we had absolutely no contact with the enemy for some three days. Then suddenly there was fighting everywhere and we got that nice order. I think we fired once or something like that before that order. Our platoon was destroyed not because of lack of training or anything like that. But because of lack of situational awarness.

Really, if it is going to have all those things, what is exactly the point why it should be entirely disposable? If you have target GPS then why not use that 120mm mortar or a dedicated system to fire a high flying ATGM. If it is not going to have it then the firer must still know quite well where the target is. If he sees it, why not use Javelin. If he doesn't see the target then somebody else must tell him where it is. Again you could use mortar. Ofcourse if it really would be possible to make a system you could fire to the direction of the enemy and it would destroy the enemy tank it would be nice. And it would be light enough to be issued one per man. And the range is 3000 meters. Then yes, I would like to have one. Also, it would be useful to have a rifle which you just point to the general direction of the enemy and it does the rest. Would be totally cool.

It really doesn't matter if the system is disposable or not if it is being lased from another position. It is enough that you have one per platoon or maybe one per company. It would propably be non-disposable and could well be 120mm mortar based. You can get a grenade with a weight of 10 kg to 10km with 120mm mortar. That is propably enough to make a top attacking missile. Ofcourse one could make a ATGM style weapon with the missile flying high. I believe these are developed actively. One big advantage of the mortar system is that if you do not use laser to point the target, but just fire a regular strike with not so regular ammunition, the MBT crews first warning is the tank blowing up. I believe the seeker can be completely passive. Propably heat seeking. Don't know what they have in store to counter these but they are going to have something for sure. There is propably one more reason why not to make disposable high arc weapon. If you can see the target then Javelin is enough.

Actually, the heavier the shell the shorter the range. I don't know how heavy should a top attacking mortar grenade with sophisticated sensors be to be useful against modern MBTs. One more thing about mortars is that you need a plate from which to fire from. If you have ever tried to fire from swamp you know what happens. The plate of 81mm mortar will go about 10cm to the ground. And this is firing from solid terrain but there is swamp nearby. The terrain is like jelly or something like that. Common in finland anyways. I can't imagine what will happen if you fire from watery swamp. Propably a disposed mortar . When you fire from rocky terrain with anything more than the base amount of powder you risk destroying the plate. Well, if the mortar is disposable, so what? The shot can go badly off. The problem is that the weapon should be attacking only a small area to be useful. And if the mortar will attack only a small area then it has to be quite accurate. I might be wrong about small area but I think that the larger the area, the heavier the shell has to be. And the larger the area the higher the risk of hitting your own troops. BTW will CMSF model the problems mortar teams have firing from rocky terrain or from woods. Firing from woods can be quite deadly... It can take one CM game to prepare firing position in forest. On the other hand the best place to put your mortar is cut down forets, where there are young and scattered trees. Ofcourse finding the mortar is easy with modern equipment (radar) no matter how well you have your mortar positioned. Winter is still a different problem, but I think we can go without modeling this in CMSF... Desert is propably the easiest place to use a mortar. You just plant it somewhere and it is ready to fire. Shouldn't take more than 10 seconds to prepare for "direct" fire. Maybe 20 seconds to fire with the way of firing where the FO is close to the mortar team. (If I remember correctly in Finland the FO can be no more than 200m from the line from the mortar to the target). I think CMx1 simulated this quite well with the platoon leader as FO way.

Ok, didn't get the question, forget about what I said in that earlier post... Disposable mortar? So, you would like to have a system that is able to launch a projectile with over 45 degree angle to 3000m? Well, I think the system is going to be a bit heavy. The ATGM systems use flying (sorry, bad english) to get to the target. Modern finnish 81mm mortar round weighs about 5kg. If you use the old and tried powder system to fire it, you need a tube made of steel. If you are going to use a rocket system, well, I don't know if it is possible to do. But I think it would be better to give every man a radio, and let them tell the mortar team there is a tank around. Or I don't know if it would be possible to have a gps + laser pointer system so that you could just point at the target and the mortar team would automatically get the coordinates. The point is, I think it will be better left to the mortar team to fire the projectile.

Are you looking for something like this? defense-update .com: Advanced Mortar Munitions

Seems I am talking about different thing... Some quotes follows: So, I though about the frontline troops job. The ones patrolling. Their job is really dangerous. Propably something like maximum of 50% are in this kind of job. And of them only a portion are in battlefield conditions. If we take your figure of 20% and 30 killed in bombings, we end up with 30000 and 30 in a month, meaning over 1% killed in a year. Now you were talking about the overwhelming bulk of U.S. forces. And true, they propably are relatively safe. But to talk about sacrifices of American troops, it would seem strange Nidan1 meant the cook on a carrier. We have one another problem, that is how we define the dangerousness of a job. Is it the total time you are in that job or per time period? If you end up in Iraq you have a risk of one in 200 to be killed and 3 in 200 of being wounded during a year. If you are in the rear then almoust no risk. And if you are in the front troops you have a much bigger risk. I am not so good with this language, so I am not exactly sure what this means: "...U.S. troops under on average a smaller personal risk in Iraq, for a much shorter period of time?". It seems that you are suggesting that U.S. troops are under a smaller personal risk per time period. But I think it is safe to say that is wrong. Last thing. From the Iraq Coalition Casualties page: Total Fatalities since May 1, 2003: 2059 Hostile Fatalities Since May 1, 2003: 1665/1547 (There are three figures, Total, Hostile and Hostile U.S. fatalities. Before the '/' is hostile fatalities and the last one is hostile U.S. fatalities. I don't know if the Total is referring to U.S. or overall fatalities.) So, the majority of deaths seem to be from hostility towards U.S. troops, not car accidents.

Somebody was talking about crystal ball. So, here is my (quite dark) vision about the future of Iraq. In the future Iraq will be ruled by Shiites. The government will propably be democratic. It doesn't matter as the majority of Iraqs are Shiites. The government will be using very inhumane ways to get rid of the insurgency (Sunni and in a lesser extent, Kurd). The governemt will be no better for the Sunnis and Kurds than the Saddam's regime was for Shiites and Kurds. USA (and Europe too) will be supporting the democratic government of Iraq in its struggle for freedom. The oilfields in Iraq will be controlled by the US oil industry and some of them will be controlled by European oil industry. US Army will propably not be in Iraq in the way they are now. But they will definitely have bases in Iraq. I hope I am wrong.

I just have to comment on this. Some statistics follows. Warning. The numbers are propably a bit off. And another warning. Its been a while since last time I did maths. But I am SURE somebody will correct my numbers and mathematics if they are wrong. Ok, there are about 150000 US soldiers in Iraq. Every month this year there has been 70 casualties per month. That means your risk of getting killed is 70/150000 per month and it is 12*70/150000 per year. That means your risk of getting killed is about 0.0056. To get injured seriously (not returned in action during 72h) is about 3 times that. So, your risk of getting injured is 1.5% per year and to get killed is about 0.5%. If you worked for 30 years with those risks your chances of surviving would be about 84%. And to get out without being injured or killed is about 50%. I don't really know what the risk are with firefighters and cops, but if they are that high I am suprised. I found a figure that says there have been 137 line-of-duty deaths this year in the USA. Now if being a cop is as risky as being a soldier in Iraq there would be about (137/11)/(70/150000) = 27000 officers in the USA. Ofcourse there are officers who are working in bad areas, and these are the ones Bigduke was talking about. And ofcourse he was talking about the overwhelming majority of the US soldiers. But if there have been about 7500 WIA and 2000 KIA during the war it would seem that if only a small portion of the forces had been taking the casualties, then everyone in that portion would be either KIA or WIA. And then ofcourse there is propably a big portion of the forces who are in almoust no risk jobs. But, 1) these are propably not the overwhelming majority and 2) every soldier who is in no risk will raise the risk for the ones "doing the job". Sources: Number of officers down Casualties in Iraq

One thing which should have a big effect on the morality of military operations in Syria is if Syria is actively supporting the insurgency in Iraq and the ways they are doing it. Does anybody have any good material about this? I am not saying that they aren't supporting insurgency. I just would like to learn more.

I would think there is some big sounds if the tube is hit. On the other hand if you are firing at max speed it means one grenade per 3 seconds. Anything happening anywhere when the mortar goes off is likely to be missed by the crew. I am not saying that it is impossible to explode the mortar by hitting the tube, just that it is unlikely. Not something we want to simulate in CMSF (although it would be funny to see your sniper firing at enemy mortar and the WTF effect of the exploding mortar). Also, if the soldiers firing the mortar are those seen in the news, then anything happening anywhere is likely to be missed by them. You might have seen the drop the bomb and run away from the mortar thing. It looks funny but it isn't the most effective way to use your mortar. And aiming the mortar better than to the gengeral direction is also going to help...

The finnish 81mm mortar tube is 1.2m long, so I think it is less than 7mm thick (because of the breech). So, it propably can be penetrated from 300m with 7.62mm AP ammunition. Also, the 120mm mortars tube weights only 100 kg, so it too can be penetrated with AP ammunition. There seems to be two different kinds of 7.62mm AP ammunition, the new one having a penetration of 7mm at a range of 550m while the old one has a penetration of 7mm at 300m. On the other hand hitting the tube in 90 angle is going to be quite hard. This is because usually the mortar is at 80 degree angle from the ground at most (I would say that 70 is the average) plus the tube effect. Some points: I don't think it is going to be easy to kill a mortar team by firing at the tube, even more so because the grenade is only one second in the tube. Also, I wouldn't fire with a mortar if it's tube was hit with anything whatsoever. The last point is that I don't seem to have a life. Im afraid I don't have anything better to do than searching if a mortar tube can be penetrated with 7.62mm AP ammunition. And here is my source about 7.62mm ammunition. I don't know anything about the credibility of this site, but the information is in the internet so it must be correct, right? 7.62mm ammo

Please, lock this down quickly. Im afraid Sergei might come up with some non-written records.